Equilibrium
by Renn Ireigh
Summary: In which Sabrina has an experience that shakes her to the foundations and threatens everything she thinks she stands for, and everyone she thinks she is. 9th installment in Patchouli series; immediately follows "Fuse" in series continuity.
1. Prelude: Stasis

_Disclaimer: _Sabrina is heartily glad I don't own this series. Even the anime writers resolved her psychiatric problems at the end of her episode. Oh, you know, at the total expense of her character and her self… hey Sab, are you sure you don't want to hang with me instead? You know how this is going to end.

_Timeline: _Takes place immediately following Fuse. Manga canon is now on official vacation. You'll see it again towards the end of the series. Follow along on your GameBoy; viva la RBY!

Equilibrium

Renn Ireigh

"_She teleported to Celadon, where she was needed."_

Fuse

Prelude: Stasis

It wasn't hard to find Giovanni in his own base. Even if she hadn't been able to feel him, to track him with the psychic senses of which she was justifiably proud, she'd have been able to find him by simply listening for the one area of the base that- in contrast to the total uproar everywhere else- was uncharacteristically quiet.

Sabrina found him in a corner of the basement- or what remained. She stepped over the lightest damage, the razed walls, the juts of concrete and earth, the tumbled tiles of ceiling. Light fixtures sputtered and sparked, half-shattered on the floor. When the floor split entirely, divided by an impromptu chasm so deep she couldn't see the bottom and so wide she couldn't leap it, she teleported. But not next to him. She landed five steps beside him and cleared her throat.

At the bottom of the new abyss, she knew, there could be bodies. And if Giovanni had left them there, he would be in no mood to be startled.

He turned around and lunged in the same movement, one hand on a PokeBall and the other on a small semi-automatic. She stayed perfectly still, just looking at him. It had been a long time since the last time Giovanni had killed someone with his own hands, but not long enough- nor would it ever be long enough- that she had forgotten it.

He clipped the PokeBall back to his belt, but kept the pistol in his hand. "Sabrina," he said, although it sounded more like an exhale. "I am extraordinarily glad to see you."

"I am sorry not to have arrived earlier," she said, and matched his raised eyebrow with one of her own. "'Not an emergency,' you said?"

"It did not look likely to be," he said. "I did not expect such _total failure_ on the part of this base's security."

"There was an attack?" she surmised.

"Not precisely. There was an intruder. A _child._"

"_Those_ children," she said, and was certain she was right.

"It seems likely."

"Then this base is no longer a secret."

"That does appear to be the case."

"The child. Is he- or she- alive?"

"Yes. We battled. He is quite good," Giovanni said pensively. "He reminds me of- well, it hardly matters." He swept his hand across, indicating the wreckage. "He escaped the earthquake."

"Are we in evacuation?"

He hesitated. Some part of her wished he would put the pistol down. "I wished to consult with you about that."

"Sir?"

"Of course, our security is compromised here. If one child has gotten in, it is possible that another may follow. There is also an evident flaw in our methods of securing the base. The personnel responsible have been dealt with." Sabrina wondered how many bullets were left in the gun. "But that does not mean that the problem is necessarily solved."

He paused again, and suddenly she understood the dilemma. "But if a legitimate businessman were to suddenly leave and cease work on his property here in Kanto's mercantile capital, and a rumor started circulating that the Team was somehow involved here as well…"

"You understand my position perfectly," Giovanni said. "That is why I wished you to be here."

_What about Koga, or Surge? _a part of her asked, and another part, the piece of her that held her wine, the piece of her that had explained to Morty that the Team made her feel alive, suggested that the first part hold its tongue. Sabrina fought the urge to clench her fist. _Focus._

"Are any of the other locations or even the bolt-holes sufficiently guarded as to accommodate transferring part of the operations to them?"

"Not particularly so," Giovanni said. "I had thought of my Gym, of course, but that gets rather more traffic than is comfortable. There is Mount Moon, but that is sufficiently out of the way that any significant movements there would arouse commentary."

"There is _my_ Gym."

"No," he said, forcefully. "You will not endanger your own position in the League with this."

"It has some of the best shielding anywhere in Indigo Insulae," she pressed on. "I sleep there, after all. Not even my own brother could pass without my permission."

"Out of the question. If suspicion turned on you? No," he said, and she recognized the futility of arguing with him any more.

"I would say that more would be lost by leaving," Sabrina said slowly. "If nothing appears to have changed, any rumors spread by children will appear to be exactly that. Clearly the security flaw needs to be addressed. It may also be time to address the problem of these children head-on."

Giovanni nodded. "That is the conclusion to which I had come myself," he said. "I am glad you agree. I have an assignment for you, Sabrina."

"And that is?"

"Shielding," he said. "I want any and all access points locked down such that no one but a Team member can get in. I am not particularly concerned about how this is done, so long as it is effective."

"That will not be a problem," she said. "It is quite similar to the wards already on my Gym."

"I should not have turned you down when you first offered to shield the base," he said. "I apologize. It was an error. I miscalculated."

"You hardly knew me at the time," she reminded him, remembering a hushed conversation in the corner of an anonymous bar somewhere in an anonymous city. _You'd be an asset to my organization, _he'd said.

"I should have revisited your offer." Finally, finally he stretched his shoulders back and holstered the gun. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, and he was so visibly exhausted that it almost looked like a smile. "Sabrina, I am very glad that you are home."

She nearly smiled back. "So am I, sir."

"Please rest. No action need be taken before tomorrow." He surveyed the basement- the spires of earth and concrete, the half-collapsed walls, the chasm. "A testament to good infrastructure- the higher floors are surprisingly undamaged. Still, Nidoqueen and I will repair this damage tonight."

"May I help you?"

"No," he said, his eyes still on the deep grave in the ground. "No, thank you, Sabrina. I will take care of it." He looked at her again, locking with her eyes. "I am very glad that you are home now."

She didn't sleep that night, after all.

.


	2. Chapter 1: Slip

_Disclaimer: _I own nothing but the hell I wreak on my characters.

Equilibrium

Renn Ireigh

Chapter 1: Slip

Sabrina rose before the sun the next day, but more out of exasperation than anything else. She hadn't slept at all, not even when she tried to exert her own power on herself. Somewhere around two she'd contemplated rousing her Alakazam for a swift Hypnosis, but had decided against it. Instead she straightened the rumpled clothes she'd not slept in, plaited her hair down her back, and slipped outside the base.

She paused at the door. Celadon City was hardly awake- the bustling mercantile city roused itself with the customers. She'd be more likely to encounter drunks stumbling out of the bars near the Game Corner than anyone in a position to focus. Still, there was no reason to tempt fate. _Better to check first,_ she thought, and reached out with her mind. She felt nothing, no one.

Shielding was not a terribly complex business. Any psychic learned it quickly- personal shielding was necessary for the sanity, particularly if one possessed a modicum of telepathy or empathy. Sabrina utterly lacked the latter, but her gift in the former was sufficient that before her grandmother Ophelia had taken Sabrina under her wing- or rather her spindly black-clad arm- she'd had a fear of leaving her bedroom because of all the thoughts she'd hear in the Tower and beyond. In her bedroom, at least, the thick stone walls blocked some of the most far-ranging; but she could still hear the more local thoughts from the surrounding routes and from Celadon City. It had been a peculiar form of madness, descending suddenly with the birth of her gift, a stream of mixed voices in languages she didn't know, hardly ever a complete thought. She'd tried to bury herself under her pillows to shut the voices out at night, but it didn't work. Of course, she'd been three years old then. When Ophelia had made to take her outside the Tower for training she hadn't cried, exactly, but her lack of composure had been an embarrassment to Agatha- which Sabrina knew, thanks to picking up a stream of mental invective.

Ophelia had taught her to blank out the thoughts that day, sitting by the shrine of Mew, and the world- and her mother- had been far more tolerable ever since.

It was a small matter for a psychic to extend personal shielding from keeping others out to keeping the self in. That was just a simple twist in the conceptualization of personal space. Invisibility, or rather "notice-me-not," was slightly more difficult, but Sabrina had quickly mastered that too. Thought redirection was harder; the psi energy had to actively influence the mental processes of each human and Pokemon affected at an unconscious level to make each sentient being deemed within the target range of the shielding believe that the decision to proceed no further and do something else instead was purely internal.

It was invisibility and thought redirection that shielded the habitation levels of Sabrina's gym. Before she'd set them up, the dojo she'd displaced had thought one night to scare her back where she'd come from. That had not worked terribly well for them; but after the fact she'd elected to prevent such rude pre-dawn interruptions. It had been most effective. Passersby and Saffron denizens alike had no idea that the gym had more than one floor, nor that Sabrina lived there. Anyone who thought to think about where the Leader laid her head at night quickly thought about something entirely different.

She'd told Giovanni it would be simple to set the same type of shielding up around the Game Corner in Celadon- a style of warding to encompass the entire city and its surroundings, and stay with anyone who passed through. _Don't ask questions. Don't wonder. Nothing is down there. No one is down there. Silly to have thought of it before_. It _would_ be simple for her. She doubted most other psychics would feel the same way.

_It is the other kind I have to worry about noticing that something is strange in Celadon City,_ she thought, and then shrugged it off. She hadn't met anyone who could see through her wards- not even Will.

Echoes of a violet and silver body hanging quiet, suffocating in wires, pinioned, and a laboratory exploding, snuck into the back of her mind. She pushed this away, too. Wherever the experiment was now, he was not in Celadon. She'd have noticed him in her mental sweep of the city.

_Time to earn your keep,_ Sabrina thought to herself, touching the door of the Game Corner as she looked out to the city; and as she drew in a breath she closed her eyes. She breathed in the city, quiet but not silent, dawn just beginning to caress the horizon line. She breathed in the breath of a hundred thousand people and a thousand thousand Pokemon; she breathed in the last of the vanishing night. All this would protect her base, all this would stay away and leave it in its silence. When the city woke, the Game Corner would be there- it would have always been there, innocent of sin, seemingly stealthless, its emotions those of hope and hard on its heels, despair. And all the coins, the sound of a million clinking coins, the rattles of the arcade machines. The things intrinsic to the Game Corner would stay with the Game Corner.

The things which didn't belong, Sabrina whispered with her mind into the sphere of thought that would become the shielding. The things which don't belong to that miasma of coins and high hopes and dreams of riches and inevitable reality… why think of them? How can the Game Corner have been anything but what it is? Must have had too much to drink/that sight of her in the shop must have rattled me more than I thought/I need another cup of coffee, not thinking straight today/I should get more sleep.

The swirling gray sphere she'd built in her mind as she breathed in Celadon City grew as she fed it with whispers. There couldn't be anything but what it seems past these doors. The basement? Of course there's a basement, where do they store anything, the whole building's an open book if you walk in on the top floor, it's just a casino. It's only logical. She wove in rational thoughts and rational counter-thoughts. She spun the shield-to-be bigger, thicker, more opaque.

Finally she stopped and considered her work as she held the sphere firm in her mind. That all worked very well for her gym; but she'd do better to add in extras for the base.

_Team Rocket?_ she whispered to the sphere. _Stories to tell children. What, are you scared? Are you four? They're nothing, one of those stupid gangs or fringe groups you hear about. Organized crime? That's ridiculous. What do we support the Elite Four for, and all these Gym Leaders, if they can't keep the city safe? If they thought them a threat there'd have been a press release, a patrol, something. _

She considered and then pulled that thought away, a needle underneath a stitch to unweave a hem line. She started over.

_Team Rocket? Stories to tell children. What, are you scared? Here in Celadon City? That's ridiculous. Who told you that? Well, all I can say is I don't want to read where you get _your_ news. Sounds reactionary. You get little gangs everywhere, people saying they can change the world, they can take over the world, it's all the same. _

_Well look, if you're going to listen to a ten-year-old kid, that's your business… look, we can even go _in_ the Game Corner if you want. You poke around and go in the basement or something. Only thing down there's a bunch of cleaning supplies, I bet._

Much better. Back to the first layer, then, the one to apply directly to the Game Corner. A new whisper into the fabric: _Embarrassing… what could be under here? Shameful. Humiliating to have thought so. _And another whisper, wordless, but a motivation: find a way to avoid the shame.

Sabrina contemplated the shield once more, a gray globe spinning slowly with tendrils of mist in her mind. That should work. Bring them into the Game Corner and all they'd think about if they got too far would be how to avoid looking like a fool.

Now to key it to the Team. She pictured the letter R, burning like a firebrand against the black of the uniform; it was her mental shorthand to bring up the Team as a whole, their mental presences fluttering into her mind. Sabrina recognized them all: the bulk of the Fleet here in Celadon; Surge in Viridian; Blaine farther out in Cinnabar but clear to her as nearly as if he were standing next to her. Giovanni. Close enough in her mind to touch. Still in the basement, slumped against his Nidoqueen against a wall, a chasm in front of him, a pistol in his hand. Fluttering between sleep and wakefulness, but at least resting. She was glad to see it.

She took that letter R, flaming in her mind, and burned a hole through the shield sphere. It rippled in her mind, absorbed the scorch, and reformed, streaked with black.

_Ready, _she thought, and allowed herself a smile.

She prepared to bring the shield out like a sheet, stretching and contorting until it blanketed the city, thick over the Game Corner and gossamer elsewhere. A single throw of her mind could hold the Game Corner secret. Beyond her dawn hadn't clambered into the sky yet; it still groped blindly in the dark for a hold on the sky. A good morning's work, and all in minutes.

Sabrina cast the shield out like a net.

It sparkled in front of her physical vision for a brief second…

…then vanished.

She felt around in puzzlement, but it wasn't in the air around her either. _What happened?_ one part of her mind said, faintly panicked; she shushed it, and the other voices that snuck in. She must have gotten distracted as she added the Team in, she told herself. _Focus!_

She breathed it out; breathed in the city again. Spun thoughts like silver threads, layered the Game Corner thick, burned the Team through the substance of her thoughts. Threw it out.

Nothing.

She was shivering now, although it wasn't cold. The sun was rising. The second shield, like the first, had vanished into insubstance the second it left her mind.

_Focus!_ she snarled at herself, quashing her shivers, forcing her limbs to remain still. Out of the corner of her eye, a passerby stared at her. She ignored her. A third time she formed the shield sphere.

This time when she pulled it out of her and prepared to throw it over the city, it fell apart in her hands.

She took a look at it- the psi energy spilling out of her fingers- and suddenly realized there were people around her. People she hadn't felt. People her sensing should have noticed, people her shields should have kept away.

Frantically she pulled up her personal shields to find only air. Whispering thoughts filtered into her mind, snatches of conversation, voices she didn't know. The people stared at her- their minds thought _who is she and what is she doing- _they started to wonder, and she grabbed wildly for anything she could, hung an anchor on that burning R, but it slipped out of her grasp and became insubstantial to her mind.

_Where is it? _she screamed, and swore she heard every psychic in a hundred-mile radius laughing. Not caring who saw her or what they thought she made a grab for the heat in the planet's core to call fire into her hand, and nothing came.

With her shields punctured, her powers fractured and unreachable, emotion flooding into her, Sabrina drowned in her panic and took off headlong out the east gate of the city.


	3. Chapter 2: Supplicate

_Disclaimer: _Not even Giovanni wishes I owned the series. He's seen my timeline for this.

_Notes: _You're following along on your old-school RBY, right? Here's to the glitch researchers.

Equilibrium

Renn Ireigh

Chapter Three: Supplicate

She wasn't a runner she'd never been a runner, she was a psychic and not an athlete, and maybe now (her mind whispered at her as her legs worked and her lungs tasted of fire and acid) maybe now she wasn't even that. Even on the pathways her feet tangled in roots and stones. She stumbled, went to her knees, caught herself, pushed herself off the ground and took off again. If her hands were bloodied from the rocks she didn't notice.

The world laughed at her. Even the air felt different, oppressive, heavy, a physical push (go back, you don't belong here) against the limbs adrenaline drove into a running rhythm. Every whisper of the wind on the grass seemed too loud, but it didn't drown out the things she heard.

Sabrina ran harder. If she focused she would start identifying the voices, tracing them back, Celadon City or Saffron or somewhere in between or somewhere farther out. And as soon as she identified them she'd hear them more, pick out sentences instead of susurrations, and when she started doing that, she wouldn't be able to block them out again. She remembered the voices, remembered the slow insanity of people always whispering, snatches of conversation that never made sense, words spoken in anger no child was meant to hear, a parent or at least donor of chromosomes slamming a sister into a wall many stories up, ghosts telling stories of the way they died and the way she'd die. It was never the same death twice. It was never in her sleep.

The core of her that had always been a comforting fire, even as an inferno, felt like year-dead embers.

As a child she'd covered her head with pillows and burrowed in blankets to shut out the madness that whispered in on the wind. Her grandmother had been the one to show her the shields, the one whose hands had held hers as she rooted them deep within her mind.

Her grandmother.

The moment she focused on her grandmother she heard the voices more strongly- Lavender Town, the Tower, the dead whispering. She hadn't realized she was so close to Saffron City already, but it hardly mattered- the Tower ghosts knew a frightened psychic when they felt one, and they knew what to do with one when they found her. And with her shields down, it hadn't taken them long.

Her legs leaden but her mind insensate with urgency she thought of her grandmother again in one more desperate attempt to shut the madness out. And somehow she thought of it, the one place she knew she'd feel safe.

Digging her toes into her boots and her boots into the path, Sabrina sprinted through Saffron City, towards Lavender Town.

Her lungs felt incinerated by the time her boots touched Route 8 and she half-slowed, half-fell into a walk. Had her breathing always been this loud? Would it ever be loud enough to quiet the ghosts?

It was still barely dawn and the trees made it hard to see, but her feet remembered the way to the little fenced-in field that the generous called a garden and the rest avoided.

She slipped through the branches and the frost-kissed tangles of dead plant matter until she reached the clearing in the center of the garden and knelt, knees not quite touching the ground. There was snow on the stone and carefully she brushed it aside to reveal the little statue of Mew.

As soon as she touched the marble, her breathing slowed. A feeling like cool water poured through her mind, a pleasant drowning that silenced the voices and soothed her ears. Sabrina lay her head on the shrine and closed her eyes, for the first time in what felt like both forever and no time at all feeling in command of her body.

She'd come here every year since the age of three, when Grandmother Ophelia had (by all appearances) ridden a thundercloud straight into Lavender Town. She'd come from Ecruteak City in the west, and originally had only intended to stay until the rainy season passed, at which point she would resume the travels across Kanto that were taking most of the time from her sabbatical from the gym. But Ophelia had been born in an era where Gravekeeper psychics were considered a blessing to the Clan and not a curse, and she'd no more than clapped eyes on Sabrina before declaring in her quiet way that the girl wanted training in a way the boys didn't. She'd refused to leave until Sabrina understood the rudiments of locking and shielding, at which point she appeared to only then become cognizant of Agatha's constant attempts to evict her from the Tower, and continued on her way. Some fourteen years later, it was his connection to her that had bought Morty a chance to take Ecruteak Gym; her gentle recommendation that Will travel to Indigo had wound up with him challenging for the Elite; and the recollection of her serene wrinkled face that led Sabrina to Route 8.

Sabrina had had only three months under her grandmother's tutelage, and she'd been young- but there were things she couldn't forget.

.

_They had walked from the Tower out to the shrine, hand in hand, bundled up- Ophelia having never quite adapted to the less-than-tropical temperatures of northern Kanto or Johto, and Sabrina conscientiously donning her scarf and mittens because Ophelia did. Hand-in-hand they came with incense and clear heads._

_"Now," said Ophelia, kneeling in the snow, mindless of her arthritic knees or of the darkness that came with the longest night of the year. "We pay our respects to our mother."_

_"My mother isn't here," Sabrina said quietly, kneeling because her grandmother had, her toes numb in her thin boots and the cold growing roots in her bones. She was glad for her mittens after all, even with the hole. She'd put on a coat and told her grandmother she was warm enough, but the coat wasn't hers, and in any case it had been leaking down for at least twenty years and hadn't much more use than as something to bend the wind. _

_Ophelia patted her head. "Our mother in spirit, child. This is the shrine of Mew." _

_Sabrina nodded as though she understood, wiggling her fingers in her mittens. She wondered if they'd light a fire._

_"Take this, now." Ophelia handed her a stick of incense and Sabrina took it awkwardly, hoping she wouldn't drop it in the snow. "Now light it, dear."_

_"I don't know fire yet," she said. _

_"You know fire as we all know fire: the force that warms our blood. Fire comes from the sun, as our power does."_

_Sabrina shook her head. "But it's dark out. The sun's gone."_

_Ophelia smiled. "It never leaves us, child. Not even on this, the longest night of the year. Breathe in and taste the air. Do you taste it?"_

_Sabrina stuck out her tongue as the wind whistled through her scarf. "Should it taste like ash?"_

_"Feel in your bones for the morning. The morning will come, just as it always does. That is how we know the sun is always there. And where there is sun, there is fire, and there are psychics. The sun gives us the life we use." _

_She felt for the sun, but all she felt was cold._

_"The sun lives to warm its children," Ophelia said serenely. "It lives, and so we live. Close your eyes, and breathe in, and look in your mind for the sun to rise."_

_She didn't feel anything except the cold in her fingers and toes and the wind made her nose itch. She thought maybe it was too dark out for the sun, except that Grandmother was wise enough to make the voices go away and not come back, so Grandmother must be wise enough for this. _

_"Look in your mind for the sun to rise," Ophelia said again._

_And she felt it, far away, a candle at the edge of a horizon._

_"It lives, and so we live," said Ophelia._

_Sabrina reached out a hand to touch the fire, and her finger felt the flame and the flame jumped to her flesh and sizzled into her skin, warm but not burning. She smiled at the light, and the way it chased the cold away from her hands without scorching her mittens, and how she felt it dripping through her skin into her veins and lying coiled somewhere in her core. _

_She held out her hand, and the fire appeared._

_Ophelia smiled. "The sun lives to warm its children," she said again, flames growing in the palm of her own hand. "Come, we light the way for it to return tonight."_

_"Why tonight?"_

_"It's the longest night of the year," said Ophelia, touching the tip of her incense stick to the fire in her hand. "We light the way for the our mother the sun to return in the morning."_

_"I thought you said that our mother in spirit was Mew," said Sabrina as she lit her incense. She kept the fire burning in her hand, just in case, and because she liked the way it felt to have fire in her veins. "Is Mew the sun?"_

_"She is like the sun. She gave us the knowledge to call the sun to us, to call the fire."_

_"Is the light for the sun, or for Mew?"_

_"It is for both of them, and for us too," said Ophelia, wedging her incense stick into a crevice in the shrine that Sabrina realized must have been on purpose. She motioned for Sabrina to do the same. "We light the fire to call back the sun. We light it in incense because the smoke reminds us that although all things may burn, we escape being consumed by transforming ourselves into a spirit that can survive. And we light it here to thank Mew, our mother, for teaching us to do these things."_

_"So… Mew taught us how to be psychics and call the fire, and that's why she's our mother?" _

_"That's right, child."_

_"I like her better than my mother. My mother doesn't want me to be a psychic. She said no daughter of hers should be."_

_Ophelia smiled again, but she looked sad. "Your mother forgets that a psychic in Gravekeeper Tower is a great blessing. Ghosts keep the dead down, but psychics keep the Ghosts alive."_

_"My mother wants me to be a Ghost. She said."_

_ "Mew wants you to be a psychic, child. Or she'd never have given you her gift." Her grandmother patted her hand. "Now, my dear, how do you feel in your heart?"_

_Sabrina considered. Her heart was an organ, she knew that, it pumped blood and it kept her alive. Once, the Tower ghosts had told her that they could stop her heart, but Ophelia had made them be quiet. _

_"It's working?" she offered._

_Ophelia smiled. "If we bring an offering to Mew on the longest night, she will grant us one wish, but only if it's made with a pure heart."_

_"How will I know if my heart is pure?"_

_"Because when you look into yourself, you will know for sure what you want. You will have no doubts, you will feel no guilt."_

_Sabrina thought about what she could wish for and whom it would help. "I don't know if I have any wishes like that. They all help me."_

_Her grandmother's smile faded a little, but she patted Sabrina's hand again anyway. Sabrina liked it when she did that; it felt nice on her cold hand. "Then you have doubts, and you should think about it. Perhaps next year, you will know in your heart what to wish for."_

_Ophelia didn't seem to be wishing- at least not that Sabrina could see- and shortly after, she helped her grandmother to her feet and started the trudge home through the falling snow. Her fire felt warm in her hand._

_She didn't know what to wish for next year, either._

_._

Her head against the marble, Sabrina mumbled, "I wish for my fire back."

A voice from everywhere said _((I cannot grant that for you)) _

She snapped her head up and looked around, but saw nothing. Then she heard: _((I tried to warn you, Sabrina)) _

She felt inside for the fire that wasn't there.


	4. Chapter 3: Shards

Disclaimer: Still no. I should also disclaim any substantial knowledge of physics, although I hope I haven't shown that unduly.

Side note: Would you all believe that the majority of this chapter has been written for a year and a half?! Your soundtrack for this piece is "Trade Mistakes" by Panic! at the Disco, which was also my soundtrack, then and now; and Coldplay's "Fix You."

Update: 14 April- Minor grammatical fix, fix to chapter sequence and title, and deletion of ending flashback scene. You'll see it later, where it better belongs. (No substantial content removed.)

**Equilibrium**

Renn Ireigh

Chapter Three: Shards

Sabrina scrabbled to her feet, feeling for the clone she knew she wouldn't find, turning slowly and watching for movement that wouldn't be there. He was better cloaked than she, she knew, and in any case, in her state, she was no match for a fully-powered Psychic.

She wished she hadn't left Alakazam back in Celadon. Panic-stricken flight had done her no good.

_((I did warn you)) _came Mewtwo's voice again, out of everywhere and nowhere.

"Did you do this?" she said, fighting to keep her voice level.

_((You did)) _

"I did _nothing!_"

_((That is the problem))_

"How could I _drain myself of my own power?!"_ she cried, automatically reaching inside. But the barren place remained, and at the feel of that yawning emptiness, she sat down hard against the marble of Mew's shrine and struggled against the lump in her throat.

_Ground and center. Ground and center. You have nothing to ground, but you can hold yourself together. _In her head, her mother: _Pretend you have some dignity, girl! You're a Gravekeeper! _In her head, her grandmother: _You have only to look inside yourself to know who you are. _She thought about taking deep breaths but the thing in her throat blocked the air, choked her into gasping, mewling sounds.

_Ground and center. _ But air wouldn't come to her lungs and her body felt heavy and foreign, unbalanced even sitting down.

With a growl that was half whimper she tried to pull herself into a lotus position against the shrine, but as soon as she lifted her eyes the world spun around her and rushed at her ears. With a cry she curled back up against her knees, her eyes screwed shut.

_((Ground and center)) _Mewtwo said, and she thought it too. _Get a hold of yourself!_ But the body she'd been born in felt wrong and her limbs were too far away to control, and her breath wouldn't come, and voices whispered at her from Lavender Town and the ground spun away from her and it was all she could do to stay still-

"I can't!"

It was that admission that undid her. As her vertigo whirlpooled her on the suddenly un-solid ground and her own body choked the air from her lungs, she found her last scrap of rational thought _((Thank Mew)) _as her vision speckled black and light.

_((Come with me)) _Mewtwo said, and unconscious, she didn't notice as he stepped out of nothing in front of her. His paw was light on her shoulder. _((Sister, you are a child. You have so much to learn))_

.

She woke slowly, barely aware of the rock floor or the rushing of water. But it was that that filled her ears as her senses came back to her one by one: the sound of a river and the damp chill of a cave.

Sabrina reached for her shields automatically, to insulate herself, but the emptiness brought the morning back to her. With a conscious effort that was almost too much, she opened her eyes.

Mewtwo floated across from her, eyes closed, his lilac shield a bubble around his lotus-folded body. Not even the tip of his tail twitched.

She recalled the last time she'd seen him, strangled in wires that strung him like a noose in his test tube.

"You brought me…" She broke off. She didn't know where "here" was.

_((I did)) _he agreed, still motionless.

"Why?"

_((You have a certain situation)) _he said. _((It has not escaped notice))_

"Whose notice?"

_((Mine, obviously))_

"How did you-"

_((Notice? I have been watching you))_

The back of her neck prickled.

_((I warned you. You were an accident waiting to happen, and now it has happened)) _he continued serenely.

She flexed her limbs, stretching them with difficulty. They felt better- felt her own. "I do not recall a warning. Rather, I remember you losing your temper."

_((I recall you refusing to do so))_

"There was nothing to justify such a loss of control."

_((And yet when I found you, you were slumped against my mother's shrine, not quite sobbing—yet. What justified that?))_

Her hand curled up white-knuckled against the stone floor, but she restrained herself. _Ground and center,_ she said to herself, and her hand relaxed. It was good to have the weightlessness of a shield around her again.

Sabrina froze, and reached out. "I didn't-"

_((I have shielded you)) _Mewtwo said. _((As you were unable to do it yourself, being both unconscious and spectacularly burnt out. And are we at all surprised?)) _He didn't give her the chance to answer. _((I did bring you here. I did not bring you here to go slowly insane from unchecked telepathy))_

"Then why?" The thing was back in her throat, tendrils scratching her lungs.

_((Because, as might now be finally evident to you, we have things to teach each other))_

Bitterly, she said "And what do you have to learn from me? How to do this?"

_((I could benefit from your control. And you, sister, could benefit from some proper education))_

"My grandmother taught me—"

_((As well as she knew how, and that is quite well indeed for the average psychic)) _Mewtwo opened his eyes. _((But your grandmother does not and will never understand how to teach someone like you))_

"You are calling her incompetent," said Sabrina, careful not to raise her voice.

_((I am saying that your grandmother has not the slightest inkling of what it is like to be raised in a cage)) _Mewtwo unfolded himself and floated to the floor, resting on the balls of his long paws. _((Because you never left it, did you?))_

"Of course I-"

_((I don't mean your body))_

She shook her head. "I left. I left there. I went back once and-" She shut her eyes and continued, very determined. "It was years ago. I left."

_((Lying to yourself hasn't helped you before, why do you persist in believing that it will help you now?))_

"I'm _not_-"

He touched one round digit to her forehead and her eyes snapped shut.

_Shut up be quiet have some dignity you're a _Gravekeeper_ act like one stop smiling stand up straight what are you laughing about sit down get away from that don't touch it go to your room and stay there you can't see him he's a failure and if you're lucky _you_ might manage to grow out of it don't argue with me go upstairs I don't want to see you back before morning don't raise your voice at me sit down and be quiet-_

She broke away from the litany with what felt like all her effort. "How _dare _you-"

_((You grew up caged as much as I did)) _Mewtwo said. _((Disconnected))_

"I grew up _regimented_," she tried, struggling for the words. "And I got out-"

_((Years after the damage had been done))_

"Are you saying I'm damaged?"

_((I'm saying you're broken)) _Mewtwo snapped. _((What do you think psychic energy is, Sabrina?))_

"It is just that, it is energy, generated by-"

_((By what?))_

"By life. Dark types use death, the negative, the black space. We take life itself."

_((And what is life?)) _

"It is-" She stopped, searching for the words. Mewtwo cut in again.

_((What makes you feel alive?))_

She knew the answer to that and blurted it. "Team Rocket."

_((What about Team Rocket makes you feel alive?))_

"It's the sense of- of doing something, of being something," she said slowly. "Being someone."

_((It's a high you don't get from your Gym))_

"Yes…"

_((And why?))_

She didn't know what to say.

_((In the Team you are a part of a whole))_

She was already shaking her head, but she didn't know why. She tried to phrase it. "I work alone, except for-"

_((Yes, yes)) _He brushed away her interjection. _((In the Team you have a connection to something. You have a passion- or at least an imitation of one, given that this is _you_ we're talking about))_

"Psychic energy isn't-"

_((Why not?))_

"Will you, or won't you, let me finish a sentence?"

_((I can already tell what you are going to say))_

She didn't grind her teeth. She was careful not to, because she wanted to. "It is considered rude to-"

_((I've spent very little of my life worrying about politesse and I don't intend to start now))_

"You are deliberately provoking me," she said, consciously calm.

_((What is psychic energy?))_

"Are you planning to interrupt me again?"

_((For the sake of the discussion, please presume I won't))_

"Psychic energy is life energy. It is possessed by living things, who can then manipulate it- if they have the talent to do so."

_((A fine enough answer, even if you do sound like you're quoting the textbook))_

"I never had a textbook." She wished for a moment that she did have one to levitate into his face, then thought, _Control yourself._

_((Apparently. How is psychic energy created, then?))_

Sabrina blinked. "It is energy. It cannot be created, no more than it can be destroyed."

_((Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. How is it obtained for use?))_

"It…" She realized she didn't have the answer.

_((You are aware of two forms of energy, of course. Kinetic- in motion- and potential- in storage. Potential energy can transform very neatly into kinetic energy with the right stimulus. But the efficiency of the transformation depends on the type of energy involved))_

"I was under the impression we were discussing psychics, not physics. I have no training in the latter."

_((Yes, it is abundantly clear that you lack even the most fundamental knowledge of how the world operates))_

Sabrina suddenly _wanted_ that textbook to slam into his face, wanted it more than she wanted to not want it. The thought and the wanting made her rein herself in, hard, regulating her breathing and her heart rate. In out, in out, with the heartbeat, the body's perfect rhythm.

_((Psychic energy is thermal in nature. Drawn from the sun, manifests as heat, conceptualized- by many of us, anyway- as fire. Stored in the heat of the blood. And thermal energy, as you may recall, does _not_ translate perfectly from potential to kinetic. Some of it is-))_

"Yes, I am familiar with the basic concept of entropy."

_((It is considered rude to interrupt))_

She didn't glare at him, but it was a near thing.

_((The energy isn't lost. It's just moved outside the usable spectrum for that psychic at that time. Elsewhere in the universe))_

"Which, theoretically, is not outside the usable spectrum for a psychic of sufficient talent."

_((My mother can reach the energy on the other side of the universe. I cannot. If you were ever aspiring to that level of talent, you may as well stop now))_

"I did qualify my statement with 'theoretically.'"

_((Let's concern ourselves with the practice. Psychics use thermal energy, heat; Dark types use its absence, which we can conceptualize for the moment as both 'cold' and 'lack thereof.' A psychic of sufficient skill can use the energy generated somewhere else. You are familiar with how that operates?))_

"Of course. One's own psychic output determines one's intake."

_((Roughly. One cannot grasp something out of reach. As I said, my mother can reach the energy on the other side of the universe. This is not because she has reached it before and is now using it to reach itself))_

"It is because she is, herself, such a strong conduit of psychic energy."

_((Precisely)) _Mewtwo said. _((Everyone has internal reserves of energy which can be drained and replenished according to basic laws of the universe. These reserves determine what I would call potential and you would call skill level))_

"Not precisely," she said. "Skill maximizes potential; but without skill, the potential is always there."

_((Is that what you were taught?))_

She refused to rise to the bait. "It is what I know through application of basic logical processes."

_((And you are right that it's so. Potential can also be minimized through misdirected skill, however))_

"Are you implying something?"

_((Very likely)) _He flicked his tail, his first motion in what suddenly seemed like a very long time.

"Did you just bring me here to discuss physics?"

_((I brought you here to establish what you know, and what you do not know))_

"And what have you discovered that I know?"

_((Very little. How do we acquire our psychic energy, then, if we're not actively pulling it from a source? How do we generate it, if you will- with the full understanding that we're not creating it but rather acquiring it through a passive process?))_

"We-" She stopped, frowned, thought again. Pressed her lips together firmly and steeled her nerves to say "I do not believe I know."

_((Ah. Here we reach the crux of the problem))_

"Obviously, you knew I was not aware, as if I were I would not be in this predicament," she snapped.

_((We return to psychic energy- thermal, conceptualized as fire, stored in the heat of the blood, vaguely called "life energy." Understood?))_

She nodded.

_((So then we ask: what is the life from which we draw the energy? How is _that_ energy stored?))_

"Are you saying this is substantially different from basic metabolism?"

_((For our purposes, yes- at least the way you mean metabolism. We're not speaking of simply powering the body, converting food to fuel, but of powering the- shall we call it a soul? The portions of us which are less able to be categorized than limbs and organs- that are more insubstantial than substantial? You could call the process the metabolism of the soul, and it's the soul we're referencing when we speak of psychic powers))_

"You are saying that psychic power is intrinsically linked to a _soul_?"

Mewtwo paused. _((Yes and no)) _he said. _((Understand I'm using a particular definition of "soul." I'm speaking less of spirituality and more in terms of spirit itself- soul as an emotional center, if you will))_

Sabrina raised an eyebrow. "I prefer to consider the limbic system my emotional center."

Mewtwo didn't have eyebrows to raise, but his face moved that way all the same. _((By all appearances, you _lack_ an emotional center))_

"I am fairly certain that my brain-"

_((Will you _please_ stop being obstinate?!)) _Mewtwo finally exploded, his lilac shield lysing before he brought it back under control. _((Sabrina, _listen to yourself! _Listen to _me_, for that matter! What generates psychic energy within the body? _Passion! _Raise your emotional level, raise the blood pressure, raise your temperature- that's heat! That's our fire! You should know better, Sabrina, it's why the ghosts hate us- it's what we have that they don't, that they want! When you kill your passion, _you kill your power!_ You keep yourself locked in the same cage your mother kept you in and you don't even know that you're throwing away your own key!))_

Sabrina opened her mouth to retort, but he cut her off. _((Stop. Just stop. You're controlling yourself even now. You don't even realize what you're doing.)) _He got to his feet within the bubble of his shield and floated a black orb of his power into midair. _((Hit this)) _the clone instructed. _((Just hit it))_

Sabrina reached with her mind, envisioning the orb fragmenting into flames; she awaited the rush in her finger-veins that meant her power was lashing out, ready to strike. But instead of coiled she felt unbalanced, her strength fizzling instead of sizzling. She struck anyway, shoving the wisp of her power instead of merely unleashing it, punching it out of her body towards Mewtwo, where it touched the orb and-

-fell away, harmless and spayed, to disintegrate into nothing.

_((Again)) _Mewtwo said, implacable.

She tried.

_((Again))_

She felt sweat at her temples, at her neck under her hair, despite the pointed lack of fire.

_((Again))_

Her fingers shook, her shoulders slumped.

Mewtwo laughed.

She looked up at him in nearly slack-jawed disbelief. "This is funny to you?"

_((See, the world's most powerful human psychic)) _he very nearly purred. _((Who cannot attack-))_

He threw an orb at her, and she reached for her shields, but the blackness smacked into her hands instead. She staggered.

_((-who cannot defend-))_

And then, from inside her mind, a sinuous whisper: _((-who cannot protect herself))_

"How dare you," Sabrina spat, or tried to with her leaden tongue.

_((What use can the world have for such a psychic?)) _he continued. _((After all, what skills has she now? What is her purpose? Who will need her?))_

Sabrina bit her lip. Hard.

_((Useless)) _he continued, hissing, predatory in the faint glint off of light reflected off of the water. _((Useless. Who could find use for such a creature?))_

"Stop," she said, and hated that she'd said it.

_((Useless)) _he continued, and she heard a second voice join with him, bodiless, a cruel whisper that came from the air itself. Sabrina shivered as she recognized her mother's voice, though surely she was in the Tower even now.

_((Useless daughter. A disappointment. So much power. Wasted!))_

"We've been over this," Sabrina whispered. "You've told me."

_((And now you can't even use it. What a pity. What – a – pity. It _is_ piteous, this thing you've… failed to become))_

_((Now you can't hold your Gym)) _Mewtwo said. _((And who will take your place as Rocket Elite? There's no shortage of candidates. The only question is whom, and how fast. There are so many, after all, who've been waiting for you to fail…))_

Agatha laughed, an ugly deep sound with no humor in it, but plenty of glee. _((You always were a disappointment))_

"Stop, Mother…" she whispered, mouth full of blood from her lip.

_((How fast will Giovanni replace you?)) _Mewtwo asked, nonchalantly studying a paw. _((Powerless- and as a trainer, merely adequate. And the other things he's offered… you've turned your back on them. And where will that leave you?))_

"Stop it…"

_((You waste of flesh and spirit, you were a waste of the time it took to conceive you)) _Agatha spat. _((I never tried to turn you because I knew you'd never make it. I tested you, and tested you, and every time you failed. You'd have been eaten alive by the ghosts in a second. It would have been centuries of work to waste. All you ever did was curl up and shut the world out when I tried to get you to show a little spine))_

_((That's her grandmother's work)) _Mewtwo said, shaking his head. _((Taught her shielding, but not the concept of not isolating herself))_

_((She can't hold a candle to her grandmother)) _Agatha said dismissively. _((The old bat knows a thing or two, but all this one did was build herself a little wall of denial to avoid the world))_

_((One wonders what she expected to come of that))_

_((One does indeed. Locked herself out of the world, came back into it long enough to commit murder, and then ran away into her own mind again)) _Agatha laughed, a horrible sound somewhere between a cackle and a self-satisfied purr. _((Do you suppose she's afraid of her own guilt?))_

_((Afraid of something, certainly. Maybe afraid of everything, since she won't let herself face it))_

_((Mystifying, isn't it? A daughter of mine- conceived at the right time, bred to be our greatest, ended up our greatest _disappointment! _Whatever she wanted-))_

"To kill you," Sabrina whispered. Her fingertips itched. "Like I killed your ghosts. I've… I've killed before."

_((Oh look, she's getting upset)) _Mewtwo said. _((Look at her, as though she could even touch me- even _if_ she hadn't burned out early, leaving her a husk, a soulless, powerless shell…))_

_((She was always a disappointment)) _Agatha agreed.

"_You_ disappointed _me._"

_((What a letdown to have that for a daughter…))_

"You let _us_ down."

_((She came out even worse than I feared, in the end))_

"I came out every bit as powerful as you feared!" Sabrina yelled.

The Cave lit up as she threw her hands above her head, fire roaring from them. Even the waters burned violet, scalding and evanescing into pale lavender vapor.

"You kicked us away when all we wanted was for someone to say we'd done all right, you shoved us down when we tried to stand up, you kept us in a cage and tried to feed us poison with your words and you couldn't _take it_ when we grew up better than you!" Sabrina shouted, unable to see Mewtwo in the fire, or hear Agatha over the crackling of the flames. The heat burned the tears from her face. "You beat Karin, you tried to kill Will, you may as well have killed Morty, you set ghosts on me to 'test me' knowing full well ghosts eat little psychic children for breakfast and still come back for seconds! You raised me knowing that the _moment_ I felt anything, the moment I did anything but act like- like some kind of soulless marionette- it would be either you or the ghosts sucking off any hint of life force! Maybe I did this to myself, but _you did this to me, _Mother! I'm not the daughter you sacrificed your sister for so you could use her as an offering- maybe that one you bought and paid for in blood, but that daughter is _dead _in Gravekeeper Tower _and all that's left is me!"_

_((Who are you?)) _Mewtwo's voice came from inside the fire.

"I am a Gym Leader!"

_((Who are you?))_

"I am a Rocket Elite- _the_ Rocket Elite!"

_((Who are you?)) _

"Sabrina!"

_((Sabrina Aetherios of Gravekeeper Tower?))_

"Sabrina, the Elite, the world's most powerful human psychic!"

The fire roared, and Sabrina saw nothing but flames.


End file.
